Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori
by Icarus Defiled
Summary: A FMA Final Fantasy crossover that got stuck in my head. Read at your own risk. Warning for obscure mythology references, and yaoi. SephirothxZack SephirothxCloudxZack TsengxReno EdwardxRoy VincentxCid CloudxReno RufusxTseng RufusxTsengxReno ScarxAlphons
1. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori

Light flares and smoke fills the air. As you feel the debris fall around you, you know there should be screams, you know that the men who have fought by your side, the ones you lived with for so long that they have become closer than family are dying and their lament for all that they have lost should have rung above all else but a white, soundless void has filled your head. Too many explosions, the Flame Alchemist deafened by his own flames, alive only for Hawkeye's aim and Havoc's dogged tenacity.

As you wait for the flame's to clear, for the static to dissipate you find yourself thinking back to before the war. It feels like it was so long ago, an eternity of blood and death, when it has only been five years. Five short little years. You can still remember the day they came, with their Mako and their General and their death. It happened so quietly, they came speaking of peace and spewing greed like all dignitaries and as bad as ShinRa was they were nothing compared to what slithered out next.

Hojo. The name itself has become a vile curse to his men and Lieutenant Fair swears that it has always been so. It came forth from the portal wreaking of blood and death, of sickness and insanity and a malice that oozed out of it to smother anything it set it's cold slimy eyes on, and the first thing it saw when it skulked from it's hole was Fullmetal in one of his infamous tantrums. The Creature had discovered Alchemy.

It was ten years since that cursed day and things have only deteriorated. The Abomination took a special interest in Fullmetal, it wanted to combine the strength of a SOLDIER with the power of alchemy and Edward, sweet precious Edward was the perfect subject. The Beast had discovered the secret to controlling him, something that no one had ever dared to do: he took Alphonse.

Five years after ShinRa descended upon Central, Hojo declared war. Suddenly the homunculus didn't matter, there was a new enemy, one that sent even Hohenheim running. The war began so very quietly. There were no explosions, no screams nor pain; just Edward Elric, or what was left of him.

Hojo had found a way to reanimate corpses. Not true resurrection no, but good enough to pass. He sent Edward, sweet little Edward Bradley's house. All it took was the right charge set in the right place. Alphonse was found, three weeks later clutching the corpse of his brother, the real one this time, rather than a clone. Al never recovered and you think that it must be nice, to be him. To sit in a safe little room and dream of a happier time, locked up all nice and warm inside his head.

You are drawn from your memories by the sudden quiet and wonder how you could have ever failed to notice your hearing return, when the screaming and crying became so common place that you no longer pay it heed. You watch as the younger troopers relax, as if the battle has stopped, while the SOLDIERs and your own men grow wary. They know that this is not a calm, it is an eye.

A tension rides the air and you feel, as you have aways felt, long before The Creature got it's rotten little claws into him: Edward; Hojo's first and favorite. You know, logically that it isn't him; you burned the body yourself, but doesn't stop your heart from stopping, your breath from catching. He stands in the desert sun, an Angel of Wrath resplendent in his white armor, golden eyes glinting in the sun and hair streaming down between his crimson wings. His second stands behind him, a creature of darkness and death, swathed in blood and shadow, his crimson eye's shining from within his red cape. The Beast named the red eyed one Keku and this one, this one is Seti, God of Storms and Chaos, of strength and conflict and it pains you to think The Creature knew Edward so well.

The smarter of the troopers die running away and for a fleeting moment you wish you could as well. By the time their bodies fall all that remains are a handful of SOILDERS and what is left of your men. Seti seems to be waiting for something and you feel your heart hit the soles of your boots at the sight of the shining red hair of Esu, for where Esu goes Eris is not far and with him flies Rashnau and Bamapana.

Esu's appearance pulls at something in the Lieutenant and subsequently in the general as well. They new him once, when he was human, as they knew Eris, and to see them like this strikes pain into their hearts, their agony plain on their features.

The time has come and you are sure you are going to die and for some reason you a struck immobile. You can not fight Seti, not again, and something tells you the General and his Lieutenant share your misery.

All is still as Seti and his men face off with you and you know that it is less as opponents and more as a cat watching a particularly stupid mouse that has dared to stand against them. As Keku raises his tri-barreled gun you feel a sense of peace and stand ready to welcome it, listening to the sound of the gun cocking.

His head splits open with a deafening sound and a part of you is angered that your death will be denied. A dreadful wail escapes Bamapana and he dives to catch Keku, and the part of you that is always General Roy Mustang, the Flame Alchemist registers the fact that they can be killed.

Another bullet takes Bamapana and you realize that the Turks have come. Tseng strides by with the newest of Scarlet's weapons in his arms and takes sight of Eris while one of the newest Turks, Nemesis, wings Esu. Tseng misses and is struck down by Rashnau, while General Sephiroth and Lieutenant General Fair fight against Seti.

You see Eris swooping down and realize the being is going for Esu, who lies wounded at Nemesis's feet. You remember who she was before she was a Turk and and you can not allow Eris to destroy her. You use your flame, made all the more powerful by the vile Mako running through your veins, the only thing The Creature was ever good for.

As Eris goes up in flames Seti gives the command to retreat and Rashnau gathers Esu and Eris to him while Seti carries the bodies of Bamapana and Keku.

Two dead, two wounded and all it took was two regiments. They will return, more than likely they will all be brought back. And you, you will go on until there is nothing left of you. As you head for the base camp, and hours of fighting with Palmer and Heidegger and ShinRa, fucking ShinRa, the old lie floats up to you from the recesses of your mind: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

* * *

The line at the end means it is sweet and fitting to die for the homeland.

I will most likely not be finishing this. It just depends on how well it is recieved and what pops into my head.


	2. Howl

Two months of this quiet, this soul hallowing, mind crushing quiet and the angels have yet to return. Somewhere, deep in the vile recesses of your diseased mind is the, not hope, for hope is too pretty, too soft a word for this twisted husk of a thing, but it is there, the thought that maybe, maybe the damage the Chosen sustained was too great, too terrible, and they were scrapped, the Creature unable or unwilling to save them. You know all to well how prone to his sadistic flights of terrifying fancy the Creature is.

And from the dark, decrepit, wretched thing that hope has become, crawls forth like maggots through a corpse, demons vile enough to make even the sins themselves cower. They scream and howl and bray like beasts, but it is their whispers that are worse. They come in a voice that reminds you of Edward in the beginning-of-all-time, when the Fullmetal Alchemist was just an ends to a means and not a mask to hide the shattered remains of a soul until ragged, painful edges could be smoothed down into the terrible apathy of the State Alchemist.

'You know you're wrong. You know that Edward would never die that way. Stupid Bastard Conell, open your eyes. It's right there in front of you.' They are dreams, you think, this voice that comes to you the dark. Dreams that will drive you sane, and that is a fate worse than death here. You fear these dreams, these visions almost more than anything, fear their siren call of a glimpse of another reality, a better reality.

What you really fear though, more than your demons, more than any voice or dream are the memories, the ones that in your rare moments of sleep creep up upon you like the evilest of beasts and lull you off into hell. They were happy memories once: Ed asleep in the sunlight, a book still balanced precariously in one hand; Fury's birthday, everyone laughing and smiling; Alicia's first play and the seven months of pictures afterward. Happy memories; twisted and tainted by loss, until you beg even the worst of your nightmares to return.

You think that you have almost forgotten "before", lost it to the time of children's games and parents that chased away fears into the dark where they belong. As far as you are concerned there was always Hojo, with his Mako and his SOLDIERs and his madness. There was always the bitter nectar of dead innocence in your mouth tainting everything you taste and wrapping around the screams and words you swallow to hold them close in a lover's soft embrace as they rot and stick in your soul. After all, there is, in every generation, both a great hero and a great villain. Who is to say that this is not as it should have always been? Life is a cycle, ever repeating, or so history proclaims. But we all know that we wrote the whole Minerva dammed thing.

Most importantly there was always this despair that seems to seep from every pore of every being and drench the crumbling walls of lost homes only to rise forth into the night and run screaming down the broken cobblestone streets, banshees giving chase over the broken, torn bodies of some father's child, some mother's baby, with a wild, mournful cry for lost sons and stolen daughters.

It reminds you of Ishbal, and the grief-stricken widows crying over lost lovers, lost sons, until madness took them and left nothing behind but vengeful broken dolls. But that is just a figment of your overwrought little mind isn't it, Roy? It is not true because were it true, were there an Ishbal, than it would stand to reason that there was a time before Ishbal, and that fucks with your happy little dementia.

So you will just bury it, down with the rest of your shriveled psyche and the battered remains of your conscience. So much better simply to react, without thought, without feeling. Just automated responses running to a repetitive, continuous, programmed simulation: fight, eat, sleep, and repeat; stretched into an endless spiral until the days seem to consume each other and become one monotonous dystopian, nightmare, altered only by the color of the uniform on the child that just died for you or because of you or just fucking because.

Blue for Amestrais; and they show blood so very beautifully on the corpses of those children the Fuhrer sends out with their crisp new uniforms and fresh new faces, who still believe the trite they were fed when they were drafted, as you once did. Children who only ever learn that they were lied to when it is too late; when monster's claw or Angel's weapon or Turk's bullet has released them from their contract. This loss of childhood angers you, and you feel oddly protective of them as if by keeping them from their fate you can live vicariously a naiveté you never really had, not like this anyway, and you don't know what anger's you more: their loss of it or your utter lack of it.

The SOLDIER's charcoals show blood just as well, but turn it a dull red, like the roofs of the holes the smaller of the creatures like to drag their prey down in to devour them. These are not the children the Fuhrer sends to the slaughter: they are warriors, hardened and tempered in the flame and fury and desperation of another war, another time.

Their General is himself a Fallen: Sephiroth, the Shattered Vessel, the one meant to destroy the world and create a new Eden for The Creature to rule. Behind him stands his second, Lt. Commander Zachery Donovan Fair, who for all of his congeniality and humor reminds you of a trained dog, whose smile could just as easily be a barring of teeth, a dangerous man in a time when instinct and will have given way to submission and apathy.

The Turks are something else entirely: they prowl the fields like wolves in white, a tribute to their fallen leader, and while they are most often covered head to white leather shoe in blood it is very rarely their own. They are predators with guns for claws and mouths full of razors that smile as they carve you open, dissect you and label you with eyes that seem to draw in the violence around them and amplify it, casting it back on their prey. They remind you strangely of Kimbley. Utterly mad, but with a cold genius behind their insanity; predators set loose in a herd of sheep, only this time there is no one there to reprimand the Wolves for using the sheep as cannon fodder.

You remember, what seems like an eternity ago but could only be several months, a mail-order-general, one of the Fuhrer's men, sent straight from the academy, asking Tseng how they could expect the Amestrais government to allow him to continue with this cruel slaughter. He had laughed, one of the few times you had heard him do so and shot him point blank. The sound of it still haunts your so seldom moments of rest, and you think, that when you get to hell, if you are not there already (and how could any hell by this bad?), that the devil will laugh the same way at you all sharp edges and broken dreams.

Like one of your mother's wine glasses breaking in your face, soft and tinkling and so very out of place with the pain it holds. You still remember when she gave you those scars around your eyes, and the way she laughed as she cut you over and over, like a child with a new toy, cruel only for ignorance of its ability to feel.

Ah, but those are not your memories are they? You don't really know who's those are do you? Who this man is, whose life was so filled with despair that it consumed him under that great metal sky until all that was left was the heart and soul of a killer, a mind so sharp it hurts you to feel it. You wish, secretly, that you could have done something for him, and from the part of your mind that is no longer your own floats up the thought that you cannot save anyone, not even yourself. Gods save men, heal them, teach them, protect them; men destroy men, break them, defile them, damn them, and it seems like all of your gods have long since abandoned you, yo. Gods do, when the men that created them no longer need them.

It is this voice that comforts you when all else is gone. Not with pretty words or false hopes, but with 'well, life's a bitch, suck it up, quit whining and go out there and do your gaia's damned job mother fucker'.

He reminds you a little of me, and that is a real bitch isn't it Roy? I wonder what it's like, to be three people. I wonder what you would do if I told you that Edward is here with us, and that all those dreams about cold steal tables and writhing blood soaked flesh are real, that they are Edward's existence right now, that they are all he knows.

An explosion sounds in the distance and you flinch back, arm raised to reign down your trade mark hell fire. It is nothing more than a firework going off in the town square, but the long minuets it takes you to realize that bring forth a sobering truth: old dogs are most always put down. That is why you hate the quiet: it makes young soldiers relax while the old ones grow paranoid. Soon they will make their move and this time of peace is simply a way for them to separate the young from the dead. Another explosion form outside and the room is bathed in a bright green. You flash back to Mako tubes and mad scientists and it takes you longer this time to let go. Several moments go by and until you notice the bottle in your hand: Shiva's Love. You would have killed yourself tonight, and all for a memory.

Another flash, this time a brilliant golden color. They are celebrating tonight, the cannon fodder are. It is the death of the angels, didn't you know? They are gone, and Hojo is loosing and soon, very soon, the war will be over and all will return to the way it once was. No! It will be better, for now our allies in Shin-ra will be here to help our country grow stronger. Or so the new Feruer says. A man named Richardson, and together with Palmer and Heidegger, he has worked steadily to "create a world without war, without strife, or pain, or discord. There will be no poverty or hunger, no sorrow, only joy and hope and contentment. A world in which all of our children can walk safely, hand in hand, into a future where all that we have known will be forgotten and only the way of peace learned".

Bullshit.

You know the truth, don't you, Roy, that there will always be war, and strife and pain, and this gods forsaken hunger that sits in the pit of your stomach and eats you to pieces until all that you remember is the caress of it's teeth, like silver claws dancing through your body. Peace. There is no peace. Peace is an evolutionary end, the point at which all things stop. Peace is death. Men the likes of Richardson and Heidegger, who have never stepped foot out of their pretty, little powdered world wouldn't know shit about it, would they. No, you see through them, see to what they truly want, as you could see through me so easily. Tell me Roy; was it because I didn't hide it well enough behind my pictures and my smile or was it something else? Was it that you could sense my lies so easily because you are draped so fully in your own web?

That is why Hawkeye and Havoc are no longer with you isn't it? Oh, they are still at your back, but they are no longer in your bed. Wouldn't do for them to see that pretty, little black ribbon you have tied to your arm, would it? Even if you are damn sure Havoc wears one as well, you can't risk it, can you? Just a little longer and you can give in to the disease. Geostigma, Soldier's Cough, what does it matter what the call it as long as it wait's a little longer. You will die, but you will die on your own terms won't you? Just as the little Shin-ra Prince did.

It is this desire that has sent on mandatory leave in Central. Somehow, Riza saw through you and sent you here. Part of you curses her for that. Part of you is too daed to care anymore.

You look at the sky and wonder if you even remember a time when the sun was more than a lighter shade of the smoke and smog and despair that rises above central. On the front, it is easier to forget what you have lost to this war. This house is a curse to you now, and you hate being sent back to it. Every dent and scratch reminds you of a moment in time with Edward. You look at the dents on the window sill and think 'here is where we found out how strong his automail could be when he lost control' and the burnt handprints in the fridge, are where you leaned that you should take your gloves off before starting an argument, because the always ended in the same way. There is no peace for you in this place.

It is odd that, here, you dream of anything but Edward. His memory haunts your every step through this mausoleum of a home but that guilt is gone from your dreams. Lately you have found yourself dreaming of that night, long ago, when anyone last saw Rufus Shinra. A bureaucrat, stupid and pompous as always had attacked the validity of the Ikene class of warrior. The Shinra Prince had stood up and answered him, in that same calm voice he had used to bid his father goodnight before he slit his useless throat. Ever word is etched into your brain as surely as the strength behind them etched Rufus's tombstone.

'These are not men; they are vengeful corpses, who have signed everything away in the hope that the families they left behind would be spared this. The men in this class are already dead. Your own government has listed approximately eighty-seven percent of the Ikene class as black tagged: soldiers who's approximate worth has decreased due to 'uncontrollable emotional upheaval'; they died the moment some bureaucrat decided that everything they sought to protect was 'an acceptable ratio of loss in the face of adverse conditions'. The other thirteen percent know what they are doing. They know that regardless of what they have left behind they are no more than men waiting to die. They choose to die on their feet rather than lying in a trench somewhere hacking up lungs, and hearts, lifting their bloodstained hands in supplication to a god who abandoned them all so very long ago, and don't you dare belittle their choice.

You sit there in your crisp new uniform and dare to talk about something you have never known. Of pain you will never feel, with hollow words and cheap sentiments and dare to tarnish what they have done with your guilt fuelled attempts at pseudo-remorse. You, who have never crawled through muddy trenches filled with the excrement of the lives of the men you have loved more than family. The blood and shit and piss and tears that builds up inside until it overflows and breaks down everything in its path.'

That little speech had cost him so very dearly you remember. He struggled for weeks afterward to hide his increasing illness until one morning he was gone. Tseng woke alone and cold for the first time in years. When he found out what Rufus had done his wrath was indescribable. The Angels themselves gave way to his search. It was a broken and bleeding Rashnau who returned him, for a week there was quiet mourning that gave way to The Hunt. There had never been a black marked Turk before. A suicidal wolf is something to watch in battle.

It is only behind lines that this Minerva forsaken dreaming begins. There is no peace for you in this place, but oddly enough on the front there is. There are no sunrises there: the sun has long been blacked out by the smoke and eclipsed by the bright flare of the bombs dropping, highlighting the planes as they glide and pirouette around each other and their weapons so that they may continue to drop death onto the dead and dying below until the streets and gutters congeal with blood around the bodies of the fortunate dead and the screams and cries have replaced the calls of birds, the stench of the rotting and decaying city obliterating the memory of flowers and clean linen and the smell of soap on a woman's neck in the morning.

You hear a rustling from your bed and turn to look at the men that you have brought into Edwards home. Niem lies wrapped around Dae, even in sleep protecting him, their bodies a perfect contrast to each other, ebony bathed in moonlight. It was Dae who started. One of the Creta born from the Chosen Anath, it amazes you that he has lasted this long the way he jumps and flinches at ghosts and dreams.

With each sound from Dae, Niem wakes with his hand wrapped around Hero's Return. He has watched you each time, pale blue eyes trained onto your marks. He is beautiful, they both are, but there is something about Niem that is different, something divine. He watches from beneath pale bangs with eyes that see too much, know too much. And in them you see reflected back every demon you have ever sought to hide. You are weighed and meassured and always found wanting in his colorless eyes.

There are days when you think to take those accusing eyes from him. All that stays your hand is the knowledge that you, the great flame alchemist, would loose. His reputation is far known as the Red Turk, but few know that the only thing Niem fears is his sweet little Dae. A year into the war they showed up swathed in the colors of a Xingian refugee and decimated an entire squad that had been hunting for sympathizers. The night your little ménage à trois began you damn near died. Dae put his fucking hand through your chest and ripped your heart out for touching his Niem and if it was not for Their thrice damned Materia you would have been lining a crows nest in central.

"...who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, alcohol and cock and endless balls..." Creepy fucker, yo. Seriously. Creepy. It's those eyes. Those black souless eyes.

Tomorrow the New Order will be anounced. Tomorrow Civil War will comince. Tomorrow change will begin. Tomorrow, tomorrow. Always something tomorrow. Tomorrow something is coming and something is begining and something is ending. Which role belongs to what piece is lost within the weave.


End file.
